Talk:Girl Meets STEM/@comment-24286227-20160205043920/@comment-26999065-20160205052607
I'd like to make a few comments about your post, Larissabear. Riley has always had flaws – mostly her various insecurities. Having flaws is not new for her, so saying she FINALLY has flaws seems odd, particularly when you use an exclamation point to say it! It's true that Riley did erroneously conclude Farkle fit the mold that put 100% of the girls and 0% of the boys in the marble-dropping category, but when she saw that was not Farkle’s particular motive, she dropped that hypothesis and they moved on – together - as equal partners. She did not, for example, call him a liar, disbelieve him, stick to her opinion regardless, or any number of questional things some girls do when they make a mistake. The fact Farkle wasn’t insulted and didn’t have his feelings hurt was pretty apparent – and therefore he didn’t really need or require an apology from Riley. He’s kind of like Spock that way. In fact, upon reflection, Farkle realized he was in the wrong – taking away without really asking Riley’s opportunity to learn the science and get better at science, too. He even apologized to her for that, and since her feelings were somewhat hurt, he was right to do so. Farkle’s The Man, after all – and by that I don’t mean men should always apologize to women whether the men were wrong or not – I mean he’s manly and secure enough not to be threatened by women - unlike a lot of guys - and manly enough to admit when he was wroooo . . . when he was wroooo . . . when he was not entirly correct, and not too proud to apologize when he makes a mistake and hurts somebody's feelings. In short, Farkle's Da Man! '''Gotta love Farkle. The fact Riley hasn’t shown a lot of interest in science doesn’t mean she has no interest in it at all, or in learning it, or in becoming better at it. She seems to enjoy astronomy – Pluto, for example, and she likes figuring things out - and that's the very core of science. She’s the free-floating astronaut and Maya’s the well grounded horse in the astronaut on a horse model – the symbolic representation of the BFF’s relationship from ''Girl Meets Demolition. ' The likelihood of this experiment seems pretty high since the science being conducted wasn’t actually on the sludge, but the social science on the students and the gender bias operating there. How often were you ever subjected to a social science experiment like that in school? Probably never – though you would have repeatedly been subjected to STEM experiments – the harder sciences - where yeah, the work should and would be divided up evenly, or all could participate simultaneously. I found it weird, for instance, that Riley wouldn’t have proposed she simply be with Farkle and conduct the experiment together right from the start – like anyone would object to that despite the letter of the instructions on how to split the work – so she could learn as much science as Farkle at the same time just by being there with him. The oddity of the instructions was their first clue this wasn't actually a chemistry experiment, but something else. The fact Norton carefully divided up the teams into boy/girl pairs was also an important clue. Observation is, after all, a big part of science. Riley observed something others missed. The real problem, of course, became immediately apparent when Riley saw 100% of the marble droppers were girls, so there was something wrong there – something much larger than her personal issue. All things being equal, about 50% of the marble droppers should have been boys and about 50% girls – but instead, 100% were girls. Riley saw this. Unlike Farkle, Riley quickly and correctly identified the true science objective in play and attempted to address that problem. If she just did the science part with Farkle, she could have learned, but they both would have missed the larger and true objective of Mr. Norton’s experiment then. They may even both have failed the assignment if she just looked out for her own concerns instead of tackling the larger issue. Farkle’s lucky to have Riley in his life. But then, so is she, lucky, to have Farkle. Though not particularly romantically, they actually love each other and have each said so to one another – and isn’t love never having to say you’re sorry? So I wouldn’t worry too much about Riley’s failure to apologize to a guy whose feelings weren’t really hurt in the first place. I see so much in this episode, so many nuances – and I wonder if the gender bias that’s at the root of the STEM problem in our society isn’t in some small measure also at the root of why many dislike the episode. At least I felt the episode was good, important, and addressed a real issue of consequence. And like most of the episodes in this series, I enjoyed it a great deal.